Why sunbeds need a roasting

I write as rain gloats against the window – since morning the sky has remained a minimalist Uniqlo grey. To step outside is to feel personally assaulted – the wind punches you in the throat and pushes you into bollards, you are promptly drenched in rain or sleet or some contemporary fusion concept of the two. These days I am never warm. My skin, previously white, is now either red or blue, like a flag pitched in the neck cavity, and when I look in the mirror, all I think about is beaches. All I think about is a fantasy, of lying under the full rays of a problematic sun and toasting my body like sourdough.

When I complained about the deleterious impact of this weather on my appearance and mental health to a young friend (of which I have many, thank you very much!) they said, with light confusion, “Why don’t you just go on a sunbed?”

For a second, I considered it. Why don’t I just go on a sunbed? I last went on a sunbed about 15 years ago, £1 a minute, more, of course, if you count the cost of life. They’re no longer beds, that’s the first thing you should know. They’re 8ft-tall pods, which you climb into naked, then pull a toilet-like door closed and inhale the scent of feet and coconut. It’s like standing inside a fluorescent lightbulb – your skin prickles lightly, you emerge blushed, and you leave the salon eyes low with caution, as if exiting a sex shop. And maybe it’s just the trick of the coconut oil, but you also feel as though you’ve been on holiday – the light mimics the sun and, as well as a tan, brings a certain sense memory of beach bars, and romance, and dog-eared thrillers with “girl” in the title.

The second thing you should know is that 43% of UK adults under 25 use sunbeds, despite the fact that people who have used a sunbed at least once have a 20% greater chance of developing melanoma skin cancer than someone who hasn’t, and that rates of melanoma reached an all-time high in the UK last year. People know this and use them anyway – a law against under-18s using them is so widely flouted that campaigners have been pushing for an outright ban. The Times reported that (despite skin cancer having become the third most common cancer among British women aged 15-44, and melanoma 2.6 times higher in women aged 20-24 than in the same-aged men) the Tanning Shop has increased its number of premises by almost 40% since 2018. Some older people are still using sunbeds, too. Former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman reported that Donald Trump has his one in his private residence, which he uses every morning.

The thing is, tanning is back. It’s more than back, it’s a whole new industry – young women are tracking the UV index on apps in order to sunbathe at the most dangerous times of day, and using unregulated sprays or injectables to tan their skin.

To be clear, this is bad. It’s obviously bad, mad and sad that a generation of young women (and old presidents) are prioritising their appearance over their safety, but, call it empathy or call it nihilism, I get it. This January chill reflects an overall sense of hopelessness. The news is frightening. The world, especially for that young tanning bracket, appears hostile. Unemployment is rising, social mobility has stalled, polls reveal new levels of stress and constant distrust of those in power. Some people surely, are feeling that as long as the world is burning they might at least try to make use of some of the heat?

I understand the appeal as I shiver whitely – a little treat to get you through the bad news, a cigarette here, a sunbed there, an informed chipping away at an unpredictable future and a winter that always outstays its welcome.

There is something liberating in witnessing a mass grasping at pleasure, but perhaps we could try to encourage the hands towards something, if not wholly healthy, then a vice that killed us a little less. I wonder – is there a way to redirect that ah-fuck-it feeling? Instead of returning to smoking, could we embrace our lingering apocalyptic fears, perhaps, by rushing towards the things we’d have been scared to do if instead a future were certain – announcing a crush, wearing something outrageous, finding a slim, unlikely channel of freedom? I’m sure there’s a way to rage against the dying of the light, is what I’m saying, without replacing that light with fluorescent tubes emitting controlled levels of UVA and UVB to stimulate melanin production. We just need to find it before the blizzards come.